A constitution in the sky

As new technology platforms and artificial intelligence reshape how billions of people all over the globe interact, learn, and make decisions, an ancient question takes on new urgency: How can humanity stay in control of its own destiny? The tools we created to enable collective decision-making and check concentrated power — property rights, courts, legislatures, elections — were built for a physical world. Now, as our lives move increasingly online, some of the most consequential choices affecting society are made not by politicians or judges, but by algorithms and tech platforms. Drawing on both centuries of political thought and evidence from a range of bold new experiments going on in digital democracy, this book reveals how we might put humanity in charge of its most powerful creations, before we run out of time.

About the presenter

Andy is the Davies Family Professor of Political Economy at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He studies how to design systems of self-governance for the online and offline worlds. He is an advisor to the a16z crypto research group and to Meta Platforms, Inc.

About a16z crypto research

a16z crypto research is a multidisciplinary lab that works closely with our portfolio companies and others toward solving the important problems in the space, and toward advancing the science and technology of the next generation of the internet.

More about us: a16z.com/2022/04/21/announcing-a16z-crypto-research

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